


2:00 A.M.

by captainodonewithyou



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-18
Updated: 2015-07-18
Packaged: 2018-04-09 21:57:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 15,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4365665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainodonewithyou/pseuds/captainodonewithyou
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU. Emma needs a date to combat her well-meaning mother’s constant questions after her love life, but she is not willing to commit to a relationship that could end in shambles. An ad on craigslist featuring a too-hot-to-be-real guy offering platonic dates in exchange for storytelling is an attractive offer to the nearly-broke Emma–one that she finds unable to refuse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It is ridiculous. She is ridiculous. She is waiting at the bus stop they’ve agreed on, ten minutes early because she wants to be able to wager whether or not the stranger is a serial killer from a distance. The street aside from her is completely desolate and it makes her wish the local coffee shop was open today, or that they could’ve found at least somewhere in the small town that is occupied to meet. She tugs nervously at the hem of her cheery red sweater and hopes that even if he is a serial killer, he is at least presentable and waits till after supper to kill her.

She cannot show up to another holiday dinner single.

It has been three years since him, and her well-meaning mother has been asking about her dating life every time they have been together since.

She doesn’t have the heart to tell her that she just isn’t like her parents, that she just isn’t meant for the honest, true relationship that they’ve developed through the years. She prefers one night stands and no ties to hold her. She prefers not giving someone enough of her to break her. She prefers being alone.

She has learned all of this the hard way.

But she can’t take another night of pity.

xxxx

When she’d seen the ad on craigslist, she laughed as she wrote down the number.

Tossing and turning in bed that same night, she gave in and reached for her bedside table and found the note and her phone.

She was an idiot.

She called anyway.

“Hullo?” A groggy voice dripping with sleep picked up on the other end, and Emma inhaled sharply, glancing at the clock.

It was 2 am.

Damnit.

“Oh my God, it’s 2 in the morning,” she replied, horrified, at the same moment a very sexy groan came from the other end of the line. “Oh, you're… I—”

There was awkward silence a moment in which the horror and embarrassment Emma felt only grew.

“Oh, Gods no. I was only stretching.”

The voice carried a dangerously melodic lilt, and was still heavy with sleep.

“What can I, er, do for you?”

This was so ridiculously stupid.

“This is so embarrassing. I should’ve looked at the goddamn clock… I just… saw your ad?”

She squeezed her eyes tightly closed, mentally berating herself for going through with this. She knew better than to make big decisions at night-there was not one she had made that she had not regretted in the morning.

So much for shutting her prying family up.

“Ah, a dinner date then?”

She could swear she heard a smirk in his tone.

“If you’re going to laugh at me, I can find someone else,” she hissed, feeling her cheeks go red. This man’s voice was extremely attractive and she absolutely hated that she did not want to make a bad impression on him.

“Oi, no, not laughing, feisty,” he answered, and she certainly heard him chuckle now, “You’re quite bloody demanding for calling me at 2 in the morning.”

She leaned back into her pillows, taking a deep calming breath and opening her eyes to stare at the childish stars that still painted her ceiling. He’d helped her put them up. Bought them one day on a whim and told her that they were going back to her place, that he wanted to put the universe on her ceiling.

What he wanted wasto get in her pants. He found her stepladder and put up two stars before things escalated. She had finished putting them up that night alone after he’d spouted some excuse of why he couldn’t stay. There had always been some excuse.

“Still there, 2 AM?” He asked then, dragging her back to the moment.

Dragging her back to calling some self-declared felon desperate enough to place an ad for dates.

She was desperate too.

“Yes, Killian right? I need a date for Thanksgiving dinner.”

xxxx

He is hot. She’d printed off the photo included with the damn ad as an afterthought before leaving the house, frenzied and more than a little convinced she was walking into some form of a trap. Men that look like him don’t place ads for dates on craigslist.

Hell, men like him don’t place ads for dates.

It occurs to her that studying his picture when he turns up likely isn’t going to make a great first impression and she crumbles it into her purse as she glances at the watch on her wrist. It’s the type that looks fancy but is made of cheap plastic and paint that starts chipping as soon as you put it on, and when it proudly displays that it is 8AM she lets out a groan. It is absolutely useless.

Suddenly out of the chilly silence of the afternoon, she hears the healthy roar of an antiquated engine. It is distant but certainly coming closer and she finds herself reaching for the print of the page again, squinting again through the words she already knows by heart.

29 years old, no college degree. Very talented liar. Will platonically accompany person in need to family or friend gatherings and pose as dedicated boyfriend to ward off those nagging aunts and uncles. In exchange, I ask only for a filling meal and perhaps a tale or two. I am a starving artist who works a bar to pay his bills (and does have a criminal record in petty crime)—but I am overall a rather charming fellow. Please call with requests (preferably not at 2AM).

She cannot help but roll her eyes at the final line. It’s been added since her night of bad judgment and she knows it is meant for her. She hopes it is meant only for her and tries not to think of him discussing the lunatic girl who called him in the wee hours of the night with his laughing friends.

God, she does not want to go through with this.

She squints down the road anyway, in the direction the engine is growing from and finally sees the red car definitely speeding towards her. She clutches the crumpled piece of paper nearer to her as she watches.

“I drive a red 1970 Monte Carlo. Real beauty, she is. Look for her, tomorrow. Can’t have some other bloke picking you up for nefarious purposes.”

“And your purposes aren't… nefarious?”

He’d laughed at her and hadn’t answered.

The car slows as it approaches her and while she has no knowledge of cars whatsoever, she knows it is him. He kills the engine at the bus stop (which she is certain is incredibly illegal), and is out of the car before she can peer in the window at him.

“I don’t think you can park here,” she says, voice edging on annoyed because he already seems like an asshole, and if the first guy she ‘dates’ after this long time is a jerk, the aftermath with her mother will only be worse.

When she sees him, her suspicions are tragically confirmed.

He is beautiful and carries himself like he knows it. He is all mussed black hair and scruff, sauntering towards her with a lazy sideways smirk that irritatingly makes her insides turn. She’s beginning to think this is all some big joke that is going to make her late to her parent’s dinner.

“2 AM?” He’s reached her now and crooks a dark brow as he very clearly takes her in, head to toe and everything in between. His accent seems even stronger in person, playing crookedly off his tongue and dancing between them. “I’m afraid you never did tell me your name.”

She watches him with narrowed eyes. She is not in the business of being wooed by good looks and tousled hair. She knows where wooing leads and she is no longer a wide eyed little girl.

“What are you getting out of this?” She asks, and interrupts as he opens his mouth, “And don’t you dare spew that 'tale’ shit, because I’m not buying it.”

She’s mostly broke and it’s a dangerous gamble, seeing as she very literally isn’t buying anything.

The smirk softens on his face, and he offers her a careful shrug of the shoulders that she certainly hasn’t noticed are extremely well-trimmed.

“Anything else would be a lie, love.”

Very talented liar.

She is a very talented polygraph machine and his lines do not so much as flicker.

He smiles again, wider, and her heart thuds.

“Have I earned your name yet then, darling?” He asks brightly. She rolls her eyes but her only thought is that something about him feels startlingly trustworthy.

The notion frightens her but she allows herself to be lulled into it anyway.

She knows better than to let anything go too far.

“It’s Emma.”

Again his smile becomes something gentler and he studies her face with a strange sadness in his eyes that is gone as quickly as she sees it.

“Well, Emma,” he winks, and it actually complements his good looks rather than cheapens them, “I do hope your Thanksgiving includes alcohol?”

She cannot help but snort at his hopeful expression that leaks obviously into his tone.

“Is there such thing as Thanksgiving without at least three drunk uncles and a small civil war?”

He reaches for the passenger side door of his car, grinning and watching her all the way.

“I am already rather fond of you, 2 AM Emma. Shall we discuss the details of our relationship on the drive over? If I recall, your parents supper starts—” He glances at his own watch, which seems at least as old as his car. “Five minutes ago.”

“Shit.”

It is as she brushes hurriedly past him to slip into the seat he’s offered to her that she notices his eyes—too blue and bright and in tune—and she swallows heavily as she looks away and falls heavily into the worn leather of the car.

She is in so much trouble.


	2. Chapter 2

He drives recklessly. He is consistently a steady fifteen above every given speed limit, and she thinks her knuckles may now be permanently curled around the edge of her seat, planting her in place. She has strapped herself to the relative safety of the seat belt which he refuses to wear, leading her to even more firmly believe that he either didn’t care if he died in a car wreck, or planned to. They’ve already missed the first two turns in result of his speed and Emma’s shock at it.

“You missed the goddamn turn again,” she hisses, watching the street blow swiftly by and disappear behind them.

“Perhaps if you gave me some bloody signal and did not expect me to read your mind,” he answers, pulling an extremely illegal u-turn in the middle of broad daylight and swinging her roughly into the side of the car (narrowly avoiding breaking her nose against the window).

“Perhaps if you drove the speed limit,” she responds tersely, body still pressed heavily to the door by the force of his turn.

“You sound like a proper girlfriend already!” He says cheerily, and she presses her lips tightly together.

He isn’t going to murder her at all. He’s going to kill them both at a missed stoplight.

“Jesus Killian!”

She has made a point of not watching him since the moment her eyes connected with his. She is determined to keep her attentions on the blurring road and not give herself the chance to slip further into whatever it is that radiates off of him, catching her so far off guard. She will not allow herself to make a connection.

But she is beginning to feel sick at how quickly trees and street signs and lights are blowing by her window, and she inadvertently allows her squinting eyes to fall on him.

It is at the exact moment that he glances at her that he choses to grin. That crooked, sideways thing that she is beginning to associate with him, with his features all bright and teasing and too blue eyes that are definitely not on the road.

She drags her gaze quickly away, and chooses to focus on the wheel instead.

He is driving with only one hand.

No. He has only one hand.

“That is the only bit of me missing, if you’re concerned,” he says facetiously, and she can hear the smirk in his voice although she refuses to meet his eyes.

Her cheeks go red. She hadn’t meant to stare, and she hopes she didn’t make him feel self-conscious. She can’t seem to do anything right with him.

“I didn’t mean—” She starts, tearing her eyes from the end of his sleeve where a scarred stump is a shocking contrast to where his left hand is meant to be. He shifts, shrugging.

“I’m missing a hand, darling,” he says, this time successfully turning on the correct street, “I’ve heard it all.”

She isn’t sure how to respond, instead unconsciously flexing the fingers of her own hand.

They are silent a moment, and she again shifts her attention out the dizzying window.

“Tell me about yourself, Emma,” he requests. His voice is shifting strangely on her name, making her stomach flutter dangerously. He is trying to change the topic, shift the awkwardness that has settled into the car.

It doesn’t work as well as she thinks he might’ve hoped.

She swallows hard.

“What… what do you want to know?” She studies her white knuckles and clenches her teeth when he chuckles, a light, rough noise that stabs straight to her racing heart.

“I dunno. You seem to be quite an interesting lass. What had you up at 2AM? What is your alcohol of choice when your life is in shambles?” He pauses and she makes the mistake of looking at him yet again. Those wide eyes are trained on her with strange, intrigued compassion. “Who broke your heart last?”

His final words startle her and she feels her walls shift firmly into place. She watches warily as he glances back at the road.

“Why the hell would I tell you all that?” She snaps, voice rough and guarded and God it wasn’t even that personal.

She is ridiculous and oversensitive and this whole damn thing was a bad idea from the start. Her heart is nagging in her chest and she feels sick thinking of him.

She was so wrong to believe bringing another man to dinner might lessen the pain of Neal, still fresh and preserved through all these years. No. He’d only bring him right back to the forefront of everyone’s minds.

“I’m meant to be your boyfriend, Emma,” his voice is gentle and his brow furrows ever so slightly as he looks back and forth between her and the road. “Are these not things I ought to know?”

She swallows hard.

He had never known her alcohol of choice. Four years and he still, always, without fail got himself a beer and her some fruity ‘girly’ crap.

This is ridiculous.

“I’m sorry,” she murmurs, and studies his face as he watches the road. A scar stretches down his cheek and she wonders if he might’ve gotten it when he lost his hand. “Look, I never should’ve called you. I never should've…” Her voice catches in her throat when he looks at her, all softness and understanding so deep that it nearly hurts.

Damnit.

“We haven’t created our love story yet, darling,” he says cautiously, clearly waging her reaction, “Don’t fire me just yet. It’ll be the best part.”

She doesn’t want him to leave.

But she doesn’t want these drowning thoughts of Neal to come back.

She returns her gaze to the street.

“Next left turn, second house on the right,” she says, and her eyes drift shut as she makes her decision. “How did we meet, Prince Charming?”

She knows he is smirking beside her.

xxxx

Her parents love him. Her mother answers the door and when she sees him on her arm she practically glows.

“Happy Thanksgiving, Emma!” She exclaims, with far too much excitement as she envelopes her in a tight hug that smells of pumpkin spice and broiling turkey. When she lets go of her she beckons them in, her father coming up behind her.

The house is warm and welcoming and inviting and the it is the only place she’s ever known as home. Killian slips his arm casually across her shoulders as they settle in the hall, and she is certain she blushes as he leans his head near to hers.

“May I take your coat, love?” He breathes against her ear and she nods, not trusting herself to speak as he slips the light material from her shoulders, revealing the just barely appropriate black dress she’d bought months ago, not anticipating a date. She is not sure if she imagines the way his breath hitches.

“Who is this gentleman,” her mother asks brightly, watching his movements with nearly embarrassing attention. Her father steps forward to take the coats from Killian, who nods politely as he takes them.

“Thanks, mate,” he says under his breath, and Emma spies her Aunt Ruby peering in from the kitchen-she nearly swoons.

Her family is so embarrassing.

“Uh mom, dad… this is Killian,” she introduces carefully, as she feels the play of his fingers against her palm. She instinctively reacts to the feel of his touch and tangles her fingers within his. She glances sideways up at him, putting as much wide-eyed care into it as she can bear.

She feels like she is looking at Neal and it makes her sick.

“You didn’t tell your parents I was coming, darling?”

He smirks playfully and she only panics a moment before she smiles widely back, subtly stepping forward directly onto his toes. She reaches as if the movement was only to straighten his jacket, grasping gently at the collar and shifting it ever so slightly.

The cringe barely passes his expression, only visible in his eyes.

Damn he is good.

It is far harder for him to hide his smirk.

“I guess it slipped my mind,” she tells him, grinning coyly before stepping back and off of his fidgeting digits to face her parents.

Her mother’s expression is so happy, and for a moment she feels bad that she is tricking her.

Only for a moment though.

“Come in, sweetheart! Sit down! Introduce Killian to the family,” she steps aside, ushering them eagerly deeper into the house. “Your brother is so excited to see his big sis.”

“He’s been chanting your name all day,” her father confirms with a steady smile, eyes set too-firmly on Killian as she tugs him into the sitting room.

Emma lets go of his hand, reaching to touch his upper arm instead, realizing too late that she’s forgotten a fairly vital piece of information.

“So, my brother is four,” she says through her teeth, leaning her head into his shoulder as they move. “I, uh, forgot to mention I’m adopted. Don’t make a deal about it. My parents like to pretend I’m theirs.”

“Ah, yes. Such a small thing to fail to mention,” he tells her through a grin. She laughs, soft and fake.

“If you aren’t careful I’ll tell them you’re a sober vegan,” she breathes, and flashes him her best smile.

Genuine fear passes momentarily through his eyes and real laughter bubbles up her throat now.

“Bloody hell, lass, I’m all yours, whatever you want,” he tells her swiftly, slightest twinkle in his eyes. “No further threats necessary.”

Her brother adores Killian even more than her parents, if possible, and he plays happily with him all afternoon.

She doesn’t think Neal ever so much as looked at her brother.

Why she keeps comparing the two, she isn’t entirely certain.

But he keeps looking at her with a quiet tenderness that does not feel like Neal at all. He talks cheerily to her parents as if he enjoys the endless conversation about her mother’s business. He laughs at her awful jokes and doesn’t requite the flirtatious nature of her Aunt Ruby.

He makes her feel comfortable and relaxed and she very nearly lets her guard down but catches herself when an uneasy alarm starts ringing within her.

The affection and touching and growing connection are things that the has sworn off, and for good reason.

No. She is better suited for nights alone and keeping her personal affairs strictly to herself.

She tries not to let it leave her feeling lonely. She knows it is far better than the alternative.

But with him, tonight, pretending to be a couple in love-she finds herself questioning the careful borders she has put tediously into place.

She hates it.

By the time her parents are begging them to stay for just one final piece of pie, it is safe to say that he is drunk. It is everything she certainly doesn’t need, and she rubs her aching head as he laughs at some ridiculous joke one of her seven (also drunk) uncles makes.

He hasn’t stopped smiling since they walked into the house, but something in the depths of his eyes is sadder. Nearly lonely. She refuses to let it concern her as she drags him nearer to the front door, trying to work his newly-recovered coat over his shaking shoulders.

“Can’t you stay for just one more piece of pie, Emma? Please?” Her mother begs, following after them.

“Can’t we please?” Killian turns on her, suddenly serious, eyes wide and blue and begging.

“No, we can’t,” she says stiffly, finally giving up on the coat and leaving it draped loosely across his back, wrapping her own sweater tightly around her. “I have work tomorrow, you have work tomorrow…”

She has no idea whether or not he has work tomorrow, but it seems like a coupley thing to say.

“I have not got work tomorrow!” He whines, shifting back and forth anxiously on his feet. The resemblance he shows to a puppy is unbelievable, and she groans, reaching for the door handle.

“It’s time to go, Killian.”

She meets his eyes with quiet urging and finally he breaks.

She swears he hangs his goddamn head.

“Bye mom, thank you for having us,” she says as she nudges her drunk date behind her, smiling wryly at her mother. “We clearly had fun. Maybe a little too much fun,” she adds, smirking and nodding at the mess behind her.

Her mom is still smiling that bright happy smile that makes her feel guilty again.

Ugh.

But then he is wandering out the door and she smiles apologetically at her mom before chasing after him, because like hell she is letting him get behind the wheel of a car.

He’s found his way to his pride and is leaning crooked against it, smirking proud and lopsided at her.

“Behold! The Rolly Joger!” He announces bright and slurred, throwing his arms up dramatically as he stumbles sideways down the slant of his car.

“Alright Captain,” she murmurs, rolling her eyes as she closes the space between them, pressing close to him and staring up into his dilated eyes that widen as she feels through his coat pockets for his keys.

(She really should’ve done this before she put the damn thing back on him).

She finds them, finally, wrapping her fingers tightly around them and lifting them between their faces where she definitely is imagining him drifting drunkly nearer to her.

“I’m commandeering your ship tonight,” she tells him, drifting back away from him and shaking her head to clear some of the dizziness his searing eyes instill in her.

He is not Neal.

Somehow, that is exactly what frightens her.

xxxx

Once she’s strapped him safely in the passenger seat (despite his protests against the safety precaution and his ridiculous pouting when she’d forced it around him anyway), she slips into the drivers side and finds him already passed soundly out.

She groans.

Even if he were awake, there was no way his drunken ass would be directing her back to his house.

She frantically sorts through options in her mind but comes up with nothing that will spare her.

She’s stuck with a roommate tonight.

She squeezes her eyes tightly closed, trying to rationalize.

He is going to sleep drunk on her couch for one night. It isn’t a commitment and she will be fine.

It’s one night.

Think about something else.

She hasn’t driven stick shift since she was 16 and learning to drive and she silently thanks her father for refusing to part with his ancient truck as she fires up the old engine and rubs her icy fingers together for warmth.

She knew that he was a bad idea from the start.

When she gets back to her apartment she parks carefully on the street in front of it and makes as much noise as she can getting out of the car.

When she comes to his side, dragging his door open sharply, he is still out cold.

She’s dealt with plenty of drunk men in her time, but something about him is different.

He is as good as a stranger, yes, but that isn’t it.

She breathes in and prods his shoulder once, watching warily as he shifts, letting out a groggy moan that makes her bite her tongue.

“Killian,” she hisses, prodding him again, harder.

This is not how she imagined this night going at all.

He moves and groans again, and finally his eyes open, bright blue squinting up at her.

“’m I home?” he mumbles, holding up a his handless arm to block the light from the lightpost she’d parked beneath.

“You’re at my place, handsome,” she answers, rubbing her forehead, “And I am not carrying you to the third floor.”

His face brightens considerably at her words and he sits up sharply, bumping his head on the roof of his car and cringing crookedly, smile never ceasing and eyes never leaving her.

Her stomach flips.

This is not good at all.

“You’re drunk, and you’re sleeping on my couch,” she clarifies, reaching a hand out to him. He takes it with far less enthusiasm than what had filled his face previously, eyes still trained on her as his calloused hand settles in hers.

Her eyes fall to where he touches her, rough tanned skin a startling contrast to her silky pale wrist.

She isn’t sure why she lets it sit there a moment before dragging him up, far faster than she probably should have. His brain is clearly still fogged and he stumbles once she’s returned him to his feet, only settling when she presses a firm steadying hand to his shoulder, rolling her eyes to hide the way they widen.

If it were Neal, she’d have to drag, practically carry him, up the stairs.

Killian stumbles up all three flights, refusing to allow her to assist him even once.

At least somewhere in him, he regrets drinking himself to despondency enough to feel relatively responsible for himself. But his stubbornness at least doubles the length of the trek, and when she finally unlocks the door to her apartment all she wants is to curl in bed and not have him there a hundred times more than she had in his car.

He stumbles heavily in after her and she hopes no one else was awake to hear his trodding down the hall.

She points him to the couch, tells him where the bathroom is, and stands there watching him silently a moment. He’s dangerously handsome in the low light, even in his squinting drunken state, and she hates herself for the thought.

But he isn’t an asshole. He’s certainly proved her wrong on that impression today.

She sighs.

“’m sorry,” he tells her unsteadily, blue eyes unfaded in the darkness. “’s bad form to get drunk on the first date.”

“It wasn’t a date,” she corrects automatically, and regrets it when his gaze falters.

“Right.”

She cannot bring herself to leave him and for a moment, her judgement lapses.

She blames his eyes, so open and unfairly bright and honest and blue.

She steps forward in one fluid motion, slipping down onto the couch beside him and regretting it the moment she sinks in, feeling him stiffen beside her.

“I think I promised you some stories,” she says carefully, because not following through at this point will only make it worse. “If you… if you’re still interested.”

He leans cautiously back into the cushions beside her, studying her with a furrowed brow.

“Only if you wish to share them,” he says, voice tentative and eyes focused on hers.

He is looking at her with that tenderness from earlier, but this time it is not just a show for her parents.

She bites her lip, studying the emotion for cracks.

She finds none.

“I’ll tell you about my lost love if you tell me why a guy like you put a date ad on craigslist?” She offers as playfully as she can manage, combating the tenseness she feels.

You’re breaking your own rules. You’re breaking your own rules and it is not going to end well.

“I’m rather more interested in your adoption, actually,” he answers, stunning her.

He was not what she expected at all.


	3. Chapter 3

“It was a dare,” he tells her, voice slurring unmistakably when the silence stretches between them, turning his head against the pillows so he is facing her. She does not miss the way his left arm twitches nearer to him and the way he bites uneasily against his lip.

She knows what he expected her to question, and he is as shocked as she was at his own curiosity that she is not more intrigued by the more obvious story.

She feels a strange, comforting connection with him as he swallows, preparing to continue.

“I lost a bet with a mate of mine, and my payment was the ad. I suppose he thought it might be funny.”

His twinkling blue eyes are far too close and alarm bells are absolutely screeching in her mind but somehow she cannot bring herself to move. Somehow, he feels safe.

“What kind of bets do you go around making?” She snorts, and a melancholy sort of smile tugs at the corner of his lips.

“It was for my benefit, truly. It’d been… it’d been a while since my last date. He only meant to help.”

His words run together in strange places but his eyes shift just noticeably away from her as they slip from his lips and she can feel the uneasiness touch into the air and she suddenly feels awful.

Even if it is not a real date, even if it is all pretend and even if he might not even be her friend- she knows explicitly the feeling of a first date after a stretching period of time and an awful ending. She is experiencing it now.

Two broken pieces are not capable of putting each other back together.

“Your friend sounds like an asshole.” She tells him, forcing the words scratchily beyond her lips instead of trying to pry further.

The touch of sadness in his eyes is cloaked as a bark of laughter escapes him, smile finally tugging into his cheeks, transforming his face back into the charming mask she’d met earlier that day.

“He is indeed.”

She bites her lip as the smile softens on his face, staring down at her fingers as silence again slips between them.

He is still drunk as hell.

He probably will not remember a thing she says.

“My birth parents left me on the side of the highway.”

She feels like she is betraying herself, allowing the words to fall so easily past her tongue. She thinks this might be only the second time she’s spoken them out loud, even if they are a silent repeating echo in her mind so often. The information feels ridiculously private, though, and once the words drift from her lips and his eyes soften and brow furrows, she feels like she is naked in front of him.

But she doesn’t wish she hadn’t said it.

“I suppose that explains your ill ease with my wretched driving, then,” he says teasingly, with just enough gentle affection in his eyes that her heart pounds.

But the smirk is tugging at her lips and she shoves at his shoulder in attempt to hide it.

“My ill ease with your driving was exclusively due to your wretchedness at it, thank you,” she tells him through an unbidden giggle, because he is smiling so brightly once he recognizes her own grin and god it feels so right. He rocks back from her gentle shove, even closer than before, and the wide smile stretching across his face melts into something more delicate.

“When were you adopted, then?” He asks quietly, somehow managing not to slur the words together.

She shifts, thinking back to the day. The young couple had been visiting her for months on end, promising again and again they were going to be a family.

She had heard the swear plenty before and she ran away when they were meant to come for her, intending not to allow herself the closeness to them that had been torn from her time and time again. She refused to go through the misery again.

The cops had recovered her almost immediately, and when she’d been brought to the station they were both there. The matching looks of overwhelming relief that came over both of their faces when the officer tugged her into the room was still etched permanently into her mind.

She was in chafing icy cuffs being pushed roughly by an officer three times her size after yet another failed escape.

Still, it was the most precious memory in her possession.

It was the first time in her life that she felt true, honest love.

Her heart swelled in her chest reliving the memory.

“I was 11,” she tells him, dragging herself back to the moment. Back to those eyes trained so exclusively on her, hanging on to her every word. “I didn’t think… I didn’t think they’d actually keep me, you know? It’s a big commitment.”

“Aye. Some simply aren’t meant to be parents.” The understanding in his eyes is all too familiar. “But they did. They kept you.” He adds, voice taking on a wistful tone that makes her stomach ache.

She can only nod once, studying him carefully. The connection she feels in the air is nearly tangible, and she forces the words past her lips.

“You were an orphan, too,” she breathes, watching for his reaction.

His jaw clenches slightly and his eyes again drift from hers as a heavy silence falls between them.

“You don’t have to… you don’t have to tell me,” she adds slowly, despite how desperately she does want to know. How desperately she wants this link with him.

Finally, finally, his eyes drift back to hers.

“’s alright,” he says cautiously, “I… I was. Of a sort. I had an elder brother to care for me.” He smiles wryly and somehow the assurance does not make her feel better for him.

She doesn’t know why she reaches out to touch his knee, but when her fingers meet the rough material of his jeans he gives a strange start, as if the comforting touch has dragged him roughly back to the moment. His eyes again focus on hers, and her heart flutters.

“It seems we are more alike than one might expect,” he tells her softly, and she allows herself a gentle smile when he doesn’t drag his knee back.

“Yeah.”

He scratches behind his ear and she thinks he might drift closer to her.

“How does a lass of your caliber end up calling a lowlife such as I to be her date?” He asks, twinkle returning to his eyes. She rolls her own, settling in.

“I already gave you your tale, Killian,” she smiles coyly and he smirks.

“Must I woo you with roses?” He asks, drunkenness making a wild reappearance as he wiggles his eyebrows.

She wrinkles her nose.

“Ugh, no. Roses are so pretentious. They think they’re so much better than all the other flowers.”

He laughs, really laughs, and she elbows him.

“You’ll wake my neighbors,” she chides, and his eyes glisten, but he quiets. “Parents.” She finally answers his earlier question with a roll of her eyes, “My parents are why I was forced to settle on a possible craigslist killer.”

She isn’t sure how she ends up curled against his shoulder laughing like it is the most natural thing in the world. But she does and it is and she can practically feel him taking down her wall, one brick at a time.

She isn’t sure why she lets him.

xxxx

She wakes up into darkness, back aching with a raging passion. She shifts closer to her pillow and studies her surroundings with squinting still-mostly-asleep eyes. It isn’t morning yet-she can tell by the hollow blackness of the room that certainly is not her bedroom.

No.

She is on the couch, and the her pillow is definitely warm and breathing.

The night comes flooding back to her in one swift wave and she sits up abruptly, away from him, reaching for the phone in the pocket of the dress she still wears.

The time reads 2:00 A.M.

She replays the night frantically in her mind, recalling talking and talking and talking with him.

But nothing more.

He had not even pressed for anything more.

She cannot remember a single time with Neal that he did not at least try something.

He is shifting now and she tries to compose herself as best as possible, shoving her phone back into her pocket and smoothing at her dress and trying to decide the least awkward way to deal with the scenario. She settles on rising hurriedly to her feet and trying to make a break for any other room.

She is not quick enough.

“Where’re you going?”

His voice is groggy and heavy and she is dragged back to their first conversation on the phone as she hears him move behind her.

She cannot come up with a lie quickly enough as she turns slowly to face his shifting form on the couch.

“I, uh, fell asleep,” she mutters, and she can just make out his dark form running a hand through surely tousled hair.

“I know.”

Oh god.

“I just thought…” she begins, and he’s rising slowly to his feet now. “I didn’t want you to feel…”

“You were just sleeping, love. There’s no need to be ashamed.” He nears her, and as her eyes adjust she can see the way his brow furrows lightly over his searching eyes.

She bites her lip but does not move away as he approaches her, shifting her attentions to smoothing her too-short dress over her knees.

He was practically a stranger and somehow she did not feel nervous.

“I’m sorry I ruined your Thanksgiving,” she tells him shakily, and still cannot look at him, even when she sees his feet come into view on the shadowed floor.

“Are you bloody joking, Emma?” He stops in front of her and she watches his right hand reach out to touch her chin, encouraging her to look at him.

She finally gives in.

“You are brilliant. Your family is brilliant. I had a fantastic time with the lot of you,” he pauses and studies her, contemplating and finally seeming to make his decision, “If I weren’t with you tonight, darling, I’d’ve been getting drunk at a bar alone. If anything, you saved my Thanksgiving.”

He is alone, too.

“What about your brother?” She asks, because she can think of nothing better to say, “I’m sure you would’ve liked to see him.”

His jaw clenches and she just knows.

“I would’ve indeed,” he says softly, and she can just make out the way his expression falls heartbreakingly to the floor.

His unwillingness to leave her parents earlier suddenly makes complete sense, and she wishes she hadn’t forced him away.

He is alone.

That aching connection throbs so tangibly again, and when she reaches to touch him this time it is not unconsciously. She reaches slowly out to him, giving him time to move away before her fingers brush gently along his left arm, up towards his shoulder. His eyes follow her movements and he takes a shuddering breath in before looking back to her with an uncharacteristic timidness in the depths of his eyes.

“Would it be awful form if I kissed you?” He asks, and this time she is the one drifting closer to him.

“Probably,” she says under her breath.

Lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely.

That’s all it is. Nothing more.

He is safe.

“You should do it anyway.”

He does. She has drifted so close now that he barely has to lower his head for his lips to find hers, gentle and soft until she presses closer and kisses harder, and he reciprocates. Her hand slips up his shoulder and cradles his jaw and she finds the scar that has driven her absolutely mad all day with her thumb, running it along the imperfection as his hand tangles firmly in the curls at the nape of her neck, other arm wrapping snuggly around her waist and dragging her close.

God, the man can kiss.

When they separate they both are breathing heavily and she nearly goes in for another but catches herself at the last moment, forcing her head down and allowing her eyes to drift heavily closed.

“Thank you for being my date,” she says, more breathlessly than she might prefer, cherishing the gentle tug of his arm around her waist and wishing desperately that it could mean something.

She knows better than to let it.

“Thank you for allowing me to,” he responds shakily, and she can’t look at him, can’t let herself, because she knows she will be helpless if she does.

She takes a heaving breath and looks up anyway, running her thumb again, slower, along his scar. This time she is not too wrapped up in kissing him to notice the way he shivers beneath her touch.

She is playing a dangerous game as she drifts to his lips again, watching the affection in his eyes before pressing a gentler, shorter kiss to his lips when he again does not move away.

“I guess I owe that asshole ‘mate’ of yours some thanks for his assholery.” She says, lips brushing his, and she feels him smirk under her. “What was his name?”

“Neal.”

She goes stiff, icy chill reaching down her spine straight to where his arm presses gently into her.

“Neal?” She repeats slowly. The name tastes bitter on her tongue and she feels all the bricks that the trustworthy blue eyes had dragged so painstakingly down fall swiftly, solidly back into place.

“Aye?”

The concern in his tone is evident.

“Is something wrong, love?”

She swallows hard and shifts away. He drops his arm without a struggle and she can feel his eyes following her.

The spots where he was touching her just moments before feel even icier than the rest of her.

“You should go.”

“Emma?”

“Go, Killian,” she repeats, praying the franticness she feels within her does not reach her tone. She searches her pockets until she finds his keys, shoving them in front of her, towards him.

There are a million Neal’s in the world. She is overreacting. She must be overreacting.

She forces herself to meet his eyes and immediately regrets it as realization hits home.

“You’re Emma Swan.” He says aloud, damn eyes widening in disbelief, “You… you’re the lass Neal chea-” he stops himself abruptly, jaw clenching as his eyes meet hers again with a fresh new pity that she knows all too well.

“Leave.”

She is so stupid.

“Emma, you have to believe I had no idea,” he presses, distress clear in his face. “I’d never-”

She shakes her head and has to steady her shaking hand to keep herself from throwing the keys at his goddamn chest.

“Take your keys and get out.”

Something in her tone breaks him and he finally does as she asks, taking his keys from her shuddering hand and moving towards the door. He stops when his hand is on the handle and looks back at her.

“I did not even know your name,” he murmurs, a final meek defense.

She turns away from him to hide the tears that burn in her eyes, even if the darkness likely cloaks them already.

She hears the door open and close slowly, and still waits another minute or so to be sure before letting the tears flow.

She wanted so badly for him to be different.

xxxx

She wakes up on her bed to brightness and three firm knocks on her door. She is still in her dress from last night and every part of her aches, utterly unwilling to move. But the knocking persists and finally she cannot take it any longer, forcing herself to her feet and stopping in the bathroom to wrap herself in her robe to mask what a complete mess she is.

She refuses to think about last night as she moves for the door, opening it wide to a large man holding an even larger bouquet of bright, mismatched flowers.

She nearly slams the door in his face.

“Delivery for Emma?” The man read from a slip, and takes in her disheveled state slowly as she accepts the bundle unwittingly. “Bad night?”

She tries not to scowl as she nods and signs where he motions for her to.

“Well, at least you’ve got flowers now. Flowers make everything better.”

She smiles wryly and nods.

“They sure do.”

She finds the note in them when the deliveryman is gone. It is handwritten and careful and she wonders if he wrote it or recited it to some overly-cheery flowershop worker who scribed it for him. She drops the flowers unceremoniously upon the counter as she scans the few words.

Emma- Please call me. I promise to not complain if it is 2AM, either. -Killian

She takes the flowers back up in her arms, clenching her jaw as she drops them angrily into the trash along with the scribbled note.

There were no roses.


	4. Chapter 4

The last thing she wants to do is go out to some dank new bar tonight but she is nearly humorously broke and needs at least something more than charming smiles to pay her landlord this month. It isn’t the first time that she has considered her mother’s desperate pleas for her to get a real job, something stable that she can count on and plan around past the next stinking bar.

But her band has been through the roughest of times and is now on that imperative brink resting somewhere between success and plummeting failure- they stand crookedly on the most vital precipice of every band’s lifespan. Even if she’s only the highly replaceable bassist, she cannot imagine abandoning the boys now and not enjoying the prospers of the years of their sweat and blood.

It is nearly six and she has pined the entire day away drinking entirely too much coffee and watching Christmas movies that are beginning to take over every channel of her television. Graham has called her no less than five times and Jefferson at least once before she forces her eyes upon the dark case of her instrument, set sloppily against the wall where she’d dropped it two nights ago after a familiar promise to herself that she would go find a real job the next day. That she’d sell the bass, grow up and move on.

She is 26, damnit.

She is too old to still be calling the shaky gigs employment.

But the thought of leaving and changing and growing is ridiculous, really, because even Neal knew she is utterly incapable of accepting change.

She gets up to start another pot of coffee, and in the same moment a heavy knock beats at the door. She eyes it warily a moment before turning to the kitchen anyway.

“Emma, I know you’re in there,” Graham’s voice is muffled through the door, but unmistakable. “I can hear your television.”

She clenches her jaw. She is not in the mood for talking.

“I brought bear claws.”

Damnit.

She flips off the betraying TV on her way to the door, tugging it open to reveal a familiar mop of brown hair, wielding a box of pastries that is entirely too large to be shared amongst only two people.

She scowls at him.

“May I come in?” He asks cheerily, widening his eyes and lifting the pastries to hide his grin from her view.

He doesn’t even look over her tangled, unwashed hair and sloppy pajama pants twice as he waits for her glaring nod of approval, brushing happily past her when she gives it, dropping the box on her coffee table, and making himself at home on her couch.

Right where he’d sat.

“Why’d you turn the TV off?” He asks, furrowing his brow up at her as she sulks as best she can to the table and waiting donuts. “I heard A Christmas Story. I love A Christmas Story.”

“Screw A Christmas Story.” She grumbles as she finally makes her way beyond the treacherous tape and frees a sticky treat from the box, settling on the couch beside him as she takes a mouth-filling bite. She chews and swallows and it tastes like cardboard on her hopelessly coffee-burnt and scarred tongue.

She drops it back in the box and leans back on the couch, letting her head fall gently on Graham’s shoulder.

He is their drummer and it is the most appropriate thing he could possibly be. He is her steadiness, her constant backing up tempo, always filling the spaces when she needs him most.

“Ruby was in the shop to pick up her car, today,” he tells her, wrapping his arm comfortingly across her shoulders, “Wouldn’t stop talking about what a charming impression the bloke you’ve been dating for months, apparently, made.”

She is silent, listening to the gentle rumble of his words against his shoulder. He knows. He always knows.

“If you needed to pretend, Emma, you could’ve asked me.” His words take on a new gentleness and she swallows hard, pressing her head harder against him to distract herself from the threatening tears. His thumb runs a gentle circle along her arm.

“You know they’d never believe that.”

“Oh, I am quite a convincing actor,” he grins, and she glances up at him in time to see a twinkle light his eye just before it melts away, and he is focusing on her again. “How did he have to do with it, then?”

She sits slowly up and eyes him warily, and he rolls his own eyes.

“Your clothing smells like pure coffee beans, you are watching ridiculous Christmas movies, and bear claws aren’t helping. You’ve clearly had a relapse. We need to fix it in…” He pauses, slipping his arm out from around her to glance at his watch before dropping it gently back into place, “On the ride, or while you get ready. It’s an early gig on the opposite side of town.”

She groans audibly.

“I can’t, Graham.”

“Have you gotten a new job yet?” He asks, eyes stern and caring and she nearly growls in frustration. It is enough of an answer for him. “You can’t miss another show, Emma. I do what I can with Victor and Jeff, but you know the band is what’s most important to them. Not even to mention that you need this, too.”

She cannot even fathom how much she doesn’t want to need it. How much she doesn’t want to rely so desperately on anything.

“Go get ready,” he says, “I’ll bring your amps to the van.”

xxxx

They are called ‘No Such Thing as Neverland’, but their few loyal followers often shorten it to the far more swallowable 'Neverland’. Which, Emma thinks, is utterly beside the point of what the name actually states, but no one beside her seems to see the issue. So, by default, only Emma groans audibly when Graham pulls around the front of the bar they’ve never played in, advertising a show 'Tonight, feat. Neverland!’.

“They’ll never get it right,” he tells her, and she can hear the smile in his tone as he pulls slowly, safely around to the back lot.

She has never felt worse about a turn not slamming her into the window.

She is ridiculous.

“So, anything you care to get off your chest before we go in?” Graham says as he pulls into a spot, turning to smile sideways at her.

He’d been her first friend when she’d gotten out of the system. The first person in her brand new school to smile at her and invite her to sit with him at lunch. She had thought he’d been hitting on her and was endlessly relieved to learn that he only wanted to ask her to join the band he was starting. She thought that it was dumb and she told him as much, and he’d smirked instead of taking on the offended air she expected. They’d eaten lunch together every day at school since, and he’d very swiftly become the best friend she had yet to have.

She would never hesitate to say she loves him.

But she isn’t in love with him and never was.

He is the brother she never knew she needed, and his disdain for Neal is solely in his protectiveness of her.

“I just wasn’t ready for a date,” she murmurs. The cold from outside is swiftly settling into the quiet van, and he presses his lips into a quiet line as he studies her.

“It’s been three years, Emma.”

“Rich, coming from you.”

It’s a low blow and she intends it to be as she turns away from him and reaches for her door. His stretching on-again off-again relationship with their manager is far beyond the edge of unhealthy and as many times as he’s pleaded with her to move on, she’s begged him for the same.

He always tells her wryly that she doesn’t understand and in the frequent months bringing it up has been her most surefire route to shutting him up.

She shrugs as she opens her door and swings out of the car before the conversation can continue, hugging her worn leather jacket tight around her shoulders as she curves around to the back, opening the trunk and reaching to heave out a couple of amps.

An icy wind is blowing as she approaches the backdoors and shifts the heavy gear in her arms to reach for the handle. It swings open before she grasps it, and Jeff is in the doorway, reaching to take one of the speakers.

“Glad you decided to turn up.” He tells her wryly, and she doesn’t reply, shoving both amps into his arms and turning back to the van.

“You can stop acting like you guys don’t need me,” she mumbles as she turns away, even if she knows clearly that they truly don’t.

She is replaceable, as always.

The wind tousles with her already mussed hair as she crosses back to the van and throws her bass over her shoulder, accepting the pieces of Graham’s drumset he hands down to her.

“I’ve got the rest,” he tells her, once her arms are sufficiently full. “I’ll meet you inside.”

Jefferson holds the door for her again, but doesn’t move to help her otherwise.

The bar is no different from the hundreds of others she’s been to. Same smoky interior, too loud voices, dark fogginess—she has outgrown it and she despises the thick air and insufficient personal space.

She is going to get a real job tomorrow. She is going to do it.

She sets up quietly and ignores Victor’s mumbling beside her.

“We were going to do your song tonight, dependant of course on if you showed up,” Victor says after a while, louder than his previous mutterings. They both are wrapping up their respective setups, and she straightens stiffly as he adds, “So you can get yourself suitably inebriated for that ahead of time.”

“I’m your bass player, not backup singer,” she grumbles, even if she knows its a losing battle. Victor works tirelessly to determine their most popular songs and he has creating setlists down to an unshakeable science that he consistently refuses to bail on. If he says she’s singing tonight, she’s singing tonight. She has known him long enough to know for certain that she has no abilities convincing him otherwise.

She settles on passive aggressively swinging her bass over her front and beginning the tedious tuning process without crossing to the bar for the drink he assumes she needs, even if she knows she’ll regret it.

She’s too stubborn for this crap.

But it works and Victor lets her be at her end of the stage, returning to his guitar on the blessedly opposite end. She doesn’t have the patience for any level of crap today, and she is already missing the drink she knows she should’ve gotten.

A heavy crowd is gathering as she tunes up but they have never been to the bar before, and it is impossible to tell whether it is normal or not. Either way, tonight is going to be fantastic publicity, and she quietly appreciates Graham for forcing her to turn up and not make a complete asshole of herself and the band. She is not a team player and never has been, but she knows how terrible it is to be let down.

She manages to avoid the bar until their set begins, at which point it becomes clear to her that no one is there for them. Curious heads turn and bob along to the catchy tempos, and more than a few girls shift towards them and play with their hair, attentions hopelessly glued to Jefferson (who doesn’t hesitate to flash his ridiculously charming smile at every last set of wide eyes).

It makes Emma roll her eyes. It’s the exact same story every single night in every single bar; an echoing, neverending grind. She plays along tiredly. The notes beneath her fingers are nearly as familiar to her as her own name. She watches the crowd shift and the girls giggle and god she wishes she had a beer.

Most of the songs are covers that they’ve thrown their own twists on. A few are Graham’s, one or two are Jefferson’s. And one is hers. She doesn’t write, not really. But when Regina decreed that she needed to sing more for their popularity to grow more effectively, even Graham (always under her little finger) had taken her side. He’d later taken pity on her frazzled state and wrote almost the whole thing for her. Except the lyrics. He’d refused to touch the crumpled, scribbled mess of words that she shoved at him when he’d finished noting down the music they’d improved together.

“Lyrics aren’t meant to be perfect. They’re feelings. Emotions. Those are never perfect and it’d be wrong for lyrics to be.”

“Are you calling my lyrics bad, Humbert?”

“Imperfect and bad are not the same thing. Do you really think I love you enough to let you ruin the masterpiece we just created with bad lyrics?”

“Maybe.”

“Get over yourself.”

It hadn’t been long after her breakup with Neal, and it was the first night in a while they’d hung out again like they used to. Without him being overly cautious, and her checking her phone every five minutes to check in. They were finally just friends again, and even if the song is far from a hit single and she pretends to absolutely despise it’s existence-it means something to her that most music does not. It is less a song than a memory and she cherishes it.

But she has sung at more shows than she can count and it has become just as dull and boring as the rest of them.

She doesn’t even try to compete with Jefferson’s voice anymore, instead moving near to her own mic and singing quietly along, hair hanging messily around her face. The lyrics rise to her tongue on instinct and her eyes drift shut as she sings.

When she opens them, she scans the crowd again. It is their last song and they seem to have attracted a decent portion of the crowded bar to the stage. She scans the faces and is content to discover they all are happily captured within the music.

Good, good.

Not good.

Her eyes have wistfully found their way to the bar, now absolutely craving the smooth bitterness of whatever she can woo one of the men in the crowd to buy her. The bartender is turned away, but she knows the dark mess of hair.

She thinks of the ad, that she absolutely doesn’t have every line of permanently echoing in her mind.

I am a starving artist who works a bar to pay his bills.

She isn’t sure if her luck could be any worse.

xxxx

The worst part of Graham serving as her own personal taxi service is that he never leaves a bar right after a concert. As an unavoidable result, she does not either.

She wastes as much time as she can breaking down the set and packing up the van, moving as slowly as she can in the frigid air. It feels good on her heated skin at first, until her body temperature is brought back down until she is shivering.

She is an adult. She can deal with him like an adult.

He might even be gone by now.

He isn’t.

She has hardly so much as reentered the bar when the bright blue eyes train on her, lighting up far too eagerly for her liking.

She tries not to grind her teeth in annoyance.

He’s no longer behind the bar and she momentarily wonders how the hell he bartends with only one hand, but then he is approaching her and she is remembering her lips against his and she realizes very clearly just how talented at multitasking he must be.

She wants to turn around but she cannot bring herself to move.

“Emma,” he greets with a gentle smile, stopping at a probably too-safe distance away. He is cautious and slow in his movements, and she can tell how shocked he is that she hasn’t run away.

She is just as surprised.

“What do you want?” She asks flatly, forcing her eyes to remain locked on his and not search elsewhere. He is not as successful in the feat, eyes flickering to her lips before flashing back up to hers.

“I just… I wasn’t aware you were in a band.”

It isn’t what he wants to say, and the tenderness of his voice doesn’t match the words. He still makes her heart race.

It shouldn’t hurt so much to learn Neal had never mentioned it to him.

“Only for like, ten years. Give or take.” She mumbles the words sarcastically, and he cringes.

“Apologies, I didn’t mean-”

She can’t look at him and not see him.

“That last song,” he says after a stretching pause where they both looked awkwardly anywhere but each other. When he speaks she looks far too enthusiastically back to him, and drops her eyes momentarily to regain her control. “Was that… was that yours?”

She slowly looks back up, eyes wavering on his scar.

“That bad?” She asks, raising an eyebrow. He chuckles lightly.

“Not bad at all, darling. The lyrics were quite intriguing. Bad eyes as a child, then?”

It’s a joke, she can tell by the lilt of his voice (and really what else was she asking for, using 'lazy eye’ as her metaphor?).

It still makes her ache.

“In a way.”

Another piercing silence cuts awkwardly between them and a muscle twitches in his jaw in a moment his mind clearly has drifted elsewhere. He comes back with a deep sigh.

“Can I get you a drink? I’m quite intrigued by your song. I’d like to hear more about it, if you’d so oblige.” He smiles warmly, openly at her, and for a moment she thinks she might give in.

Yes, yes, yes, yes…

“No, I don't… I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

His face falls and her heart stutters painfully as she prepares the line of excuses she is so used to spewing, waiting tiredly for him to press on. Hoping she can hold her ground. She wants a drink. She wants to sit and talk with him. But he is Neal’s friend and nothing related to him is even remotely safe for her.

“Right.”

“I just-”

His words drift past her ears only when she’s halfway through her next shove, and she feels her brow furrow as he takes a slight step away.

“It’s alright, love. It was a long shot.”

She watches dumbfounded as he moves away from her, still watching her.

“I don’t suppose you’re a fruity drink type lass, but in case you’re fancying one tonight, I recommend avoiding the oranges. In my humble bartending opinion.”

He smiles tensely, eyes still trained on her, and trips slightly when he steps on a foot in his backwards trek, snapping instantly back to his feet and smirking sadly in spite of himself.

She blinks after him, replaying the interchange again and again, brow furrowed as he finally turns away.

“Was that him?”

Graham’s voice is sudden from behind her and she starts slightly, turning and giving his shoulder a light shove.

“Don’t sneak up on me like that!” She chides shrilly, and he chuckles.

“I didn’t scare you, and you’re changing the subject.”

She glares at him, in part because her pounding heart is not due to him and in part because his prying is ridiculous.

“He was just a guy offering me a drink.”

His eyebrows shoot up.

“That you turned down?”

He knows her far too well for either of their wellbeing.

She doesn’t answer, and then sighs her defeat.

“Yes.”

“What did he do?” His heavy brows furrow slightly as he waits, and she knows to step carefully around his protective streak.

“He’s friends with Neal.” She tells him simply.

He leaves it alone, but the way he studies her expression tells her it is far from over with.

xxxx

A night later her phone buzzes. She knows it must be past midnight but she reaches for it anyway, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.

It’s from Graham.

Haven’t seen it myself, but sources say Neal is sporting a gorgeous shiner.

She smiles to herself at the far too pleasing thought, making a quiet promise to shake the hand of whoever had handed it to him. She’s just putting down her phone and lying back into her pillows when it buzzes again.

That bartender bloke of yours, he was his mate, yeah?

Another pause, in which she wonders just how much her friend has had to drink, and if she should be considering calling him a taxi.

Funny coincidence that his knuckles are rather battered up, isn’t it?


	5. Chapter 5

She ends up in the office of her exes father as a result of a series of events each more unfortunate than the last, starting with a particularly pained visit from her landlord and a tragically bare bank account.

“I need your rent, Miss Swan. I am afraid I can only give you a few days more.”

Immediately, she had called their band manager with low hopes and even lower spirits, which only lowered even further as the woman spoke.

“You will get your split at the end of the month, same as always.”

“Right, so here’s the thing; I’m broke and I need it now.”

“Perhaps a side job would be wise, Ms. Swan.”

Regina had hung up then, no further words exchanged, leaving Emma spluttering entirely necessary expletives into the emptiness of the apartment that definitely was not going to be hers for very much longer.

She had never particularly been one to hold down a desk job, regardless of the variety. She has always preferred action and motion and a schedule that is not pre-determined for her. But as days passed and the dwindling funds in her bank account became more and more concerning, she began to think that her preference might no longer have a say.

The employment options for a late-20’s failure, however, were not particularly overwhelming.

In fact, after an exhaustive search, she came up with only one.

Emma has only ever had one real job in her life and although she held the position through the majority of her time in high school, she was absolutely shit at the part where she actually did work. It was a desk position at a law agency where she filled out paperwork and filed claims and did coffee runs for her extremely terrifying boss…who also happened to be her now-ex’s father.

The connection, she knows, is the entire reason the job remained hers in spite of her remarkable shortcomings. Neal had never had much of say in it, but his father always had an odd admiration for her relationship with his son.

Needless to say, she broke up with Neal and the company all at once, incapable of facing his powerful father with her awful desk-work ethic again, and mostly certain that she would be fired if she turned up again anyway.

She is in Gold’s office now because she is desperate.

She tangles her fingers uneasily beneath the table in front of her, trying not to bite at her cheek as she studies the man in front of her. His quiet expression is frighteningly unreadable as he studies the résumé she’d shakily presented him with upon her arrival.

“I’ve grown up. I’m more responsible now.”

She has uttered variations of the words again and again, becoming more and more uneasy at Gold’s silence.

But finally he moves, pressing his lips into a firm line and looking up slowly from the résumé to her.

“You need money.”

He speaks slowly and meticulously, face still infuriatingly unreadable. She swallows, but nods, knowing honesty is probably her best option. He lowers his hands, setting her résumé on the desk in front of him and smoothing slowly over it.

“Are you under some impression,” his voice is slower and more meticulous than the long fingers tracing the edge of her carefully compiled papers sat in front of him, “that my son and I do not communicate?”

Her heart thuds at the mention of Neal and her brow furrows in confusion.

“Excuse me, sir?”

His jaw twitches, and he again turns his dark eyes on her.

“Are you under the impression, Miss Swan, that I do not see my son on a regular basis?”

She has no response but confusion to stare back at him with, stomach clenching with anxiety.

“I do not make a habit of condoning the hiring of violent people.”

Her eyes narrow, and she sits up a bit straighter at the man’s words.

“I… I’m not entirely sure what you’re implying?”

“You are quite brave to come and ask my assistance, after what your new partner did to my boy’s face. I am implying, dearie, that you are going to need to find employment elsewhere.”

Disbelief fills her.

“I had nothing to do with whatever the hell happened to Neal’s face,” she snaps, “And I am not dating Killian Jones.”

Gold’s expression does not change.

“My answer is unchanged, Ms. Swan. Perhaps you would do well to consider the company you keep in the future.”

xxxx

She draws an audience the moment she storms into the bar with the rage of God surely pouring out of her every movement following the door-slamming vengeance she’d entered with. He is at the bar and seems to be the only one who hasn’t yet thrown a suspicious glance her way, and God, he is in for the surprise of his life.

She reaches the stools and does not even bother trying to get his attention, head still turned so she is just out of his view.

Instead, she pushes between two empty stools, coming straight up to clutch the bar top with shaking fingers and fix her rage entirely on him.

“Screw you.”

He recognizes her voice and she catches the corner of his brow shooting up as he finally registers her existence, turning slowly from where he is mid-chat with a brunette who is smiling at him like he has created the goddamn heavens. He tilts his head a touch when those blue eyes do eventually land on her, narrowing to regard her with wary confusion.

“Pardon?”

“I said, screw you, Jones.”

His brows raise fully now, and she is livid when she catches a hint of amusement flash in his eyes. His gaze flashes down a moment as he reaches to scratch at the back of his head.

His knuckles are still purple.

“I’m sorry, is my life somehow funny to you?”

The bar has hushed behind the scene she is making, but soft whispers follow these hissing words.

He smiles, tense and sarcastic.

“Not particularly, love,” he pauses, eyes still studying something behind the bar she cannot see, before finally, waveringly, rising again to meet her gaze, blue tinted with a dangerous edge. “Rather tragic, really.”

Scattered laughter answers his words, and she could kill him, grinding her teeth and clenching her jaw and focusing all of her attention on digging her fingernails into the wooden bar so as not to jump over it and sink them into him.

“I close in less than two bloody hours, Swan. Perhaps I can get you a drink and we can discuss whatever this is when I do not have customers.”

She scowls at him, pressing her lips into a firm line before pulling jerking a chair out and settling stiffly into it, crossing her arms firmly over her chest.

“I don’t want a drink,” she hisses as he opens his mouth again, and he shrugs as the bar finally begins to start making noise again.

In spite of his movement of indifference, his gaze falters on her, and softens ever so slightly as his eyes scan her expression carefully.

She tucks her arms more firmly against herself.

“I thought you had work to do,” she says through clenched teeth.

He wavers a moment more, before letting out a slow, resigned breath and taking a step closer to her.

“I shouldn’t have said that.” His voice is quiet, eyes pleading.

She knows what he means. But it is easier to pretend she does not, nodding to her left at the line of customers surely in need of something.

“You were being honest.” She speaks bluntly, and shrugs, aiming for indifference but falling a little short.

He shakes his head once, more concern drifting into the lines of his face as he reaches his hand to scratch uneasily behind his ear for the second time since she’d stormed in.

“I meant calling your life—”

“I know what you meant.”

Someone down the bar is calling perturbed for his attention, but he still pauses.

“Certain I cannot get you a drink, love?”

She chews at the inside of her cheek and glares up at him.

“I can’t afford a drink, no thanks to your apparent incapability to keep your hand to yourself.”

His eyes widen in nearly comical shock.

“Is that what this is about?”

The calls from the other side of the bar are becoming more agitated and pushy, and she sighs.

“Go work. You said two hours, right?”

He gives her a weak smile that doesn’t quite meet his eyes.

“Aye.”

xxxx

He brings her a beer after about an hour, in spite of her protests.

“You don’t have to drink it, love. But it’s on the house.”

She does drink it, after a while, growing thirsty as she watches him work with careful, practiced movements. She cannot deny how amazed she is at his capability to be entirely competent, even talented, regardless of having only a single hand to work with. Other people watch him too, and ask questions that she can tell by the growing tiredness of his charming smirk become old swiftly.

But she cannot blame them.

He checks in on her every once in a while with soft smiles and words that are too gentle for her taste, but she can feel the swell of rage in her chest beginning to fizzle down to mild annoyance the longer she sits.

Clever asshole.

She isn’t sure she entirely minds.

The crowd has dwindled enough by closing that he does not even need to put up a fight to get the place cleared out entirely, and she watches as he smiles and waves the last customer out the door, locking it and switching the sign to closed as he does so.

And then, finally, his full attention is on her as he moves back towards the bar.

“Right. Ready to be yelled at now,” he tells her, holding out his arms as if to welcome whatever she has to say and shooting up an eyebrow as he passes back behind the bar again, “so long as I’m permitted to clean up as you do.”

He reaches for a glass and she searches her mind and presses her lips together, but the blurring rage she had felt earlier is all but gone. She sighs, shaking her head once, slowly.

“I’m sorry. That was… really immature.” The words catch uneasily in her throat as they come out, and she immediately presses her lips back together once they have, watching as he reaches for a washcloth, brow furrowed in the attention he is paying his work, before glancing up at her.

“I understand. He was your hit, fair and square. Just quite hard to refrain from landing him with one, if I’m honest.”

He cautiously laces amusement into his tone, watching carefully for her reaction to it—and she is shocked when she has to fight back a smile. He catches it and is clearly proud of the accomplishment, biting back his own smirk and turning his attention back to scrubbing the bar.

“No… no it wasn’t that.”

“No?”

He stops again, this time putting down the washcloth and moving nearer to her, brow furrowed as he studies her.

“I’m kind of broke,” she mutters, even if she isn’t entirely sure why she is again spilling her most embarrassing secrets to him. It is something in the way those baby blues study her, she muses, as the words continue to tumble past her lips, “And I lost my only employment option because Neal’s daddy thought I was involved with you.”

He raises an eyebrow quizzically.

“Neal’s father was your only employment option?”

“I’m not exactly pristine employee material, Killian.”

He falls silent again, watching her with careful consideration before the soft twinkle of an idea lights in his eye.

“C'mere.” He steps back, motioning with his hand for her to join him.

“Excuse me?”

“I said, c'mere,” he repeats, smirking ever so slightly, “behind the bar, love, come on.” He encourages. “I won’t bite. Or kiss. Cross my heart.”

He moves his stub to cross over his heart but she doesn’t move, studying him cautiously.

“Why?”

He lets his head fall to the side.

“Need a job or not, Swan? If I say I need an assistant, I’ll get final say. Now come here so I can give you a crash course. Unless you’re already capable of mixing a drink?”

The teasing lilt of his final words tells her he knows that she most certainly is not.

She is still wary, but she gets up and moves to the bar, lifting the gate and ducking under to join him.

The offer is tempting.

And she does need the money.

“And why,” she asks as she slowly lowers the gate back into position, taking a careful glance across the wall of colored bottles before returning her gaze to him, “would you help me, after today?”

He drops his head forward as he smirks, peering at her through his dark eyelashes before half-masking the amusement and looking at her fully.

“Perhaps my belief that having you here will prevent further outbursts is ill-reasoned?”

She shoves his shoulder to hide her own grin, and his breaks back across his face.

“So tell me, wise bartender. How do I not lose this job?”

He squints and straightens, pressing his lips together in exaggerated thought.

“Learn the drinks, respect the drinkers, and never,” he pauses, expression growing serious, “Never, ever,” he stops again, fixing her with a steady stare, “sleep with your customers.”

She is immediately defensive, brow knotting as she considers his words and the assumption that she actually might before she allows her attention to waver to him again. She can tell he did not intend the words quite how she heard them.

She purses her lips and debates a moment before opening them.

“And why should I not sleep with my customers? It’ll bring them back.”

She waggles her eyebrows in a move that she thinks is probably far more suited to him, and it is his turn to fix her with a look of concern.

“Aye. And they’ll expect discounts and free drinks and seconds. Makes for bloody awful business.”

“Okay,” she says, and she is certain she doesn’t imagine the shock that crosses his face at her uncharacteristically easy submission.

She needs the job.

“So about rule one, then…”

He nods her towards him and she follows without hesitation this time as he moves to the center of the bar, reaching beneath the table and pulling out a laminated sheet.

“’s all on here,” he tells her as she comes up beside him, slipping it sideways into her waiting hand. “Some of the regulars use odd names, so if you’ve got any questions I am a fairly safe cheat sheet as well.”

His shoulder presses to hers as he turns so he can use his hand to run a finger down the list.

“They are alphabetical. Records exactly what you’ll require for each drink. I used this religiously my first month working, and still sometimes refer back to it. Bloody gift.”

She lifts the list a touch, following the path his finger traced slowly and taking quiet note of a few of the listed drinks. And she does so while trying to ignore her heart pounding a resounding, unnecessary reminder of how close they are.

She swallows.

“Emma?” His voice is soft, and he moves a step back from her, eyes falling to the floor as he reaches to scratch behind his ear once more—a movement she is quickly coming to recognize as a nervous habit. She sets the drink list cautiously on the countertop, turning her body to face him.

“What is it?”

He shifts uncomfortably between his feet, and finally raises his eyes to her.

“I… I don’t mean to bring this back, but… I just…” His jaw twitches, and he reaches behind his ear again, pressing his eyes closed- before sighing and dropping his hand and opening his eyes all at once. “I need you to know, that when I went out with you, I had no idea who you were. I cannot say with certainty that Neal did either. I would never hurt someone in such a way. Not purposefully.”

It is then that she really smiles at him, corners of her lips tugging ever so slightly as she makes a small movement towards him.

“I know.”

It only takes him the briefest moment to smile back.


	6. Chapter 6

“Where are you from?”

The question rises to Emma’s lips unbidden as she studies him across the table that she honestly didn’t remember existing until her frantic cleaning haul earlier that day, when he had called and said he had groceries and alcohol and invited her to his apartment to continue her crash course in mixology. She suggested her place instead before considering the mess she lived in, and he had agreed cheerily—making her promise to allow him to do the cooking and hanging up before she could work out a counter-counter-suggestion.

At that point, she did what she always does in a pinch—texted Graham.

Emma: help

Graham: are you dying?

Emma: yes. due to your hesitation i am now dead.

Graham: I’m doing work now, will call later

Emma: when you say doing work do you mean doing regina?

Emma: sorry

Emma: no I’m not

Emma: graham?

Needless to say, she did not hear from Graham—and was left to the next best option.

“Mom… I could use that help cleaning my apartment now, if you aren’t busy.”

Regardless of whether her mother was actually busy or not, she showed up at her door exactly 15 minutes later, cleaning supplies on either arm and the brightest smile Emma has ever seen eagerly lighting up her face. In under an hour her apartment was shining and practically unrecognizable.

Her mother smiled knowingly at her on her way out, asking if that handsome gentleman from Thanksgiving was her special guest. Emma rolled her eyes with a smirk, pushing her mother out the door with a hug and still another ‘thank you’.

He’d turned up exactly 5 minutes before promised, smile perhaps even more eager than that of her mother's—wine in hand and crumpled brown paper grocery bag under arm.

He smiles warmly at the question and she is glad it doesn’t appear to seem too out of the ordinary to him.

“I was born just outside London. My father took a job here when I was 'round fifteen, brought my brother and I along with.”

She twists spaghetti absentmindedly on her fork as he speaks, trying not to lose herself in the lulling rise and fall of his tones. She peers up at him when his words die out to find he is watching the movements of her hand with a quiet concentration, as if he is caught in a trance.

She drops the fork to her plate and cringes at the sharp sound of metal on glass—hastening to fill the sudden silence that follows.

“God, London. You must miss it.”

It seems to break him from the stupor, and he raises his eyes to offer her half a modest smile, a slight haze over the deep blue that tells her he is in a different moment.

“Not the city quite so much as the stars.”

She cannot help but shoot up a brow quizzically.

“The stars?”

She immediately regrets the biting sarcasm eating at her tone, but he seems to be amused, or at the least intrigued by the response—own forehead furrowing as a testy smirk comes across his lips.

“Aye. Don’t tell me you find stars pretentious as well?”

“It’s hard to like stars when you have to stare up at a ceiling-full that your ex put up every goddamn night.”

A moment of that pity she despises passes through his expression but it is gone so fast she cannot even be certain it was there.

And then he scoffs.

“Well that won’t do.”

He is up in a flash and she nearly misses the mischievous twinkle that lights his eye as he pushes his chair back with a scrape that she is sure to hear about from the people downstairs in the morning—moving off to peer sideways down the hall that leads to her bedroom before leading himself down it.

Her brow furrows and she stumbles to her feet to follow, watching as the asshole opens her closet, then her bathroom (which she is certain she has already shown him the placement of). When he finally reaches her bedroom he lets out a soft “ha!"—and slips in, flipping the light switch as if he belongs there.

What the hell.

She picks up her pace, slipping into the room behind him.

He is stood up on top of her bed, head tilted to take in the stars stuck above him. He smirks crookedly down at her when she enters—and with a start she notes he’s already taken down a few, sticking them to his handless lower arm.

She can only blink a moment, watching as he drags his attention back to the issue at hand, turning his chin upward and reaching for another star, bouncing up on the balls of his feet to reach and sticking it to his arm when he has freed it.

She groans.

"You could at least take your shoes off.”

Dried mud is clearly crumbling off the bottom of his boots and settling into the creases of her sheets and the mess makes her head spin. He has the sense to glance down at the mess and look mildly contrite before smirking at her as she crosses the room towards him.

“First time I have heard something of the likes in a lady’s bed.” He glances again, pointedly, at the ceiling before looking back at her, “What type of bloody constellations are these meant to be?”

She punches his leg as she reaches the bed but smirks, and he catches her fist and uses it to help haul her up beside him. She stumbles slightly at the force of his pull and the uneven mattress beneath her toes, and he steadies her shoulders.

“Step on my toes and I will fucking rip your eyes out, regardless of how pretty they are.”

He swallows back a laugh that very obviously catches in his throat, eyes bright and far too close to hers.

“As you wish—but I’ve a request in return.”

“Not stepping on my toes is non-negotiable.”

“Your toes are safe,” he touches her wrist gently, smile fading, and she tries not to tense against the brush of his fingers, “Make me a deal, once we remove these blasted stars you will give me an opportunity to show you the reason I am partial to the real ones?”

They are still close and it is not her fault if she remembers kissing him, thinking of his lips on hers and the way she felt so goddamn safe melting into his arms. It is even more certainly not her fault if she might sway unconsciously nearer to him.

If he tries to kiss her, she knows she won’t stop him.

For a moment, she thinks he might.

Without warning, the ringing cry of her phone bites out through the silence—vibrating against her ass and practically startling her into stumbling backwards off the bed as she trips over her feet. She lets out an array of curses as she lands (luckily) in a heap on her mattress instead, reaching to grab her phone and pull it to her ear just as it nearly rings out.

“Hello?”

Killian is still standing upright, amusement lighting up the lines of his face as he ducks his head sideways to inefficiently hide his silent laughter.

“Asshole,” she mouths slowly, and he only laughs harder, running a knuckle across his forehead and turning his attention languidly back to her ceiling.

“Is this the ghost of Emma I’m speaking to? I was operating under the assumption she was dead?”

Goddammit Graham.

“No, but she is busy.”

Killian glances down at her words, waggling his eyebrows suggestively, and she kicks at his legs (which are unfortunately just out of her reach).

“Busy doing what? Weren’t you in dire need of my assistance?”

“Busy doing none of your goddamn business.” She hisses, and Killian blessedly chooses not to respond directly to these words, chest still shaking with quiet laughter.

“Funny, because your Aunt just popped by and left me under the impression you were doing a bartender… lesson.”

She clutches at the phone, glancing uneasily up at Killian and hoping her volume is too low for him to make out the words—internally groaning at the incapability of her family to keep anything quiet.

“Oh my God, do you need something or are you just being an asshole.”

“The second one.”

She hangs up, dropping her phone sideways onto the bed beside her before glancing up at her ceiling, which is slowly becoming sufficiently void of Neal.

“Mm, that’s nice.”

He rolls his eyes, offering his hand when she reaches and helping her upright again, slow enough this time that she doesn’t stumble.

“Rather simple solution, as well,” he prods, and she ignores him, reaching for the last star that is still stuck above her and pressing it onto his bad arm along with the rest once it is free, smirking at the night sky pressed among his scars. She lowers her finger from the star, drawing lightly along the lines of skin free between them, almost unconsciously.

“I think you’re wrong.” She tells him, fingers settling at the end of his scarred arm, slowly raising her eyes to meet his.

“Shocking.”

He smirks, but his eyes do not lift from where she touches him, blue clouded as he chews at his cheek.

“The stars would be crap if they didn’t have the night sky backing them up and making sure they came out and did their thing every night.”

He stays silent, muted longing still touching his eyes as he raises them to hers.

“I’ll let you try to convince me still, if you want.”

He finally smiles.

“Mills Farm, then?”

Her brow crinkles in confusion around her smile.

“Alright?”

“The sky is clearest on the outskirts of town,” he explains slowly. “Say we meet at 2AM?”

His eyes sparkle at the implication and she lets out a small laugh.

“2AM it is.”


End file.
